#133: The Bedroom Window
Spare a moment for the view
Welcome to my room with a view. You wouldn’t think that outside my front door was a busy main street and a 15 minute walk into Durham City Centre, yet here I am, looking out onto a field of horses. This is what it is like to live in a small city.
A few weeks back, Eleanor wrote about her view from the train window, looking out onto the vast city of Newcastle from a distance, quite a contrast to my quaint little view. While Eleanor sits on a train everyday, I sit at my desk. It is the life of an English Literature student, filled with independent reading and research rather than numerous contact hours.
While I love what I study, sometimes it can get just a little bit too much to be stuck in your own head all day, every day, reading and reading and thinking and then reading some more, and making notes in between. I need moments to take a breath and pause, and it is this view which helps me. While Eleanor collects herself in her momentary view of the bridges of Newcastle, I lose myself in my countryside views, or the sun shining on my face at noon. I can find myself sitting for many minutes, gazing at the trees and leaves, at the figures in the distance on the hills and the birds flying through the sky. I watch sunsets and sunrises, and the frost on the hillside. I even watched some snow fall today.
When I look out, I think of the popular ‘would you rather’ question: would you rather live in a beautiful building with an ugly view, or an ugly building with a beautiful view? I think about this often, and I know how much I love beautiful buildings. But I also know how much I struggle when my desk does not face a window, with a view out onto something more beautiful than the stress of work in front of me. And so I will always choose a beautiful view.
At those moments when work gets too overwhelming, I wish to stand up, put my shoes on, and walk out into this view. I want to become a part of it, for someone else to look out on and let their thoughts wander, and often I do just that, for a good walk clears the mind.
But sometimes there is too much work for me to let myself be distracted for too long, and so a view must do, and a view can do an awful lot.
